Preventative medicine really lends itself to thinking about risk doesn't it!
There's lots in here. Your point about the constraints that people face (e.g. price of gym membership) when trying to change is well made and really important. Your post also made me wonder about of risk communication.... might people respond differently to calls to lose weight if risk was communicated differently? There's lots in the literature on risk communication, but I have in mind a study that explored the effect on smoking quit rate of telling patients their lung age (Parkes et al, 2008). Its perhaps different from the obesity example (?) but showed an increase in quit rate as a result of communicating information differently. What they couldn't explain is...... why?
Parkes G, Greenhalgh T, Griffin M and Dent R (2008) Effect on smoking quit rate of telling patients their lung age: the Step2quit randomised controlled trial. British Medical Journal 336: 598.
